Page 29 of Changed Plan

“She sounds right on track for fourteen. Is your dad not a beach guy?”

“No, not at all. He loves to sail, but hanging out on a sandy beach is not his idea of a good day.”

“Sailing sounds relaxing, too.”

“You’ve never been? Text me so I have your number. Maybe I can get away long enough to take you.”

“You probably need to be with your family.”

“I do. And I will be. But if there’s an opportunity, I’d love to take you sailing.”

I watch her walk to the desk to take her phone off the charger. Her hair’s still damp, but it’s started to air-dry into loose waves around her face. She looks beautiful. She’s beautiful with her hair blow-dried and makeup on, too, but it feels like a privilege to get to see her like this. Especially wearing nothing but my t-shirt.

She sends me a text.

No one has ever made me squirt twice before.

Damn, she knows how to work the element of surprise.

I look up and catch her devilish smile.

“I’m clearly your soulmate,” I say with a shrug, as if her suggestive message didn’t just make me feel like a teenage boy with his first girlfriend. That’s not an exaggeration by much. The words may have been entirely unlike anything a young girlfriend ever said to me, but it’s been a long time since anyone excited me the way she does.

“I don’t think our souls had anything to do with it,” she quips.

“Oh, come on. The entire atmosphere conspired to introduce us. It was practically divine intervention.”

“A blind date, courtesy of catastrophic weather conditions.”

“Snow-blind.”

“Snow-blind date sounds like the title of a romance novel.”

“You read romance?”

“Don’t say it like you just found out I sell my dirty panties on the internet.”

“Do you?”

“Not yet. But if I don’t get another job soon . . .”

God, I love laughing with this woman.

“Speaking of panties, put some on, and let’s go take one last stroll through Rome. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find departures on the boards already.”

“I’ve never had a guy tell me to put my panties back on.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take them off again as soon as we get back to the room.”

“Maybe,” she says. “Unless I find a buyer in Rome.”

11

Darby

No Reservations

Thedepartureshaven’tbeenupdated on the boards yet, but it’s obvious people know the storm’s ending soon by the way the overall mood has lifted. There’s a bit more of the usual hustle-bustle energy in the terminal, even though none of us is actually going anywhere just yet. People are up and moving around, and there are fewer morose expressions.

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